A widely-used type of business communication is a multiple-part form which, as received by an addressee, comprises a sealed outgoing envelope containing contents, and bearing instructions for opening the outgoing envelope for gaining access to the contents. Often this involves tearing of an end of the sealed outgoing envelope along a line of weakness, then pulling on opposite end margins of the opened envelope to withdraw the contents, along with two half-moon-shaped end pieces of the open end of the outgoing envelope. The contents come free because, if they are attached at all inside the outgoing envelope, they are attached only at one or both ends, but not along their long sides. Rather, on the sides, the contents are narrower than the space inside the envelope. Often that space is defined by two lines of glue which adhere the front and back sheets of the outgoing envelope to one another adjacent opposite long edges of the outgoing envelope. The outgoing envelope contents typically comprise one or more preprinted form parts at least one of which has been personalized by applying to it some customized printing, e.g. relating to a customer''s account. The contents further typically include an open, pre-addressed return envelope, and instructions for making payment by enclosing a check or other form of payment in the return envelope together with all or part of at least one of the form parts, closing and sealing the return envelope, attaching postage, and mailing this assembly to the return envelope send-to addressee. A generic term by which such a multiple-part form is known in the trade is a "mailer".
The term "parts" of a form could refer to two different entities. It could refer to separable sub-assemblies of a form, and the term is sometimes used in that way. At other times, it is used for referring to the number of layers of sheet stock which are assembled to create the form whether and regardless of to what extent these layers of sheet stock are adhered or otherwise connected to one another either by the form stock manufacturer or by its customer, the sender of the outgoing envelopes. The term is used in its latter sense in this document.
One popular method used for manufacturing form stock of multiple-part mailers is to provide a plurality of webs, which are considerably longer than broad, at least some of these webs having a row of drive sprocket-receiving holes along one or both lateral margins. As the webs are advanced, various operations are performed on them at various stations, including printing, longitudinal and transverse perforating, longitudinal and transverse gluing die-cutting, application of strips or spots of carbon-coating, glassine window patches, and the like. In the course of performing this processing, portions of some webs may be cut away, or some of those webs may be cut into a succession of segments, so that when the various layers are stacked and pressed together to assemble the form stock, some layers are effectively discontinuous lengthwise of the composite web. For instance, between outer continuous web-type layers which bear a repeating pattern of cross-web between webs glue line, adjacent cross-web perforation, adjacent cross-web between webs glue line, long space, and repeat, layers are interleaved in the space regions, which are discontinuous longitudinally of the composite web from one such space to the next, thereby providing contents for the potential outgoing envelopes. The outer web layers which define the fronts and backs of the outgoing envelopes are attached to one another along between web longitudinal glue lines adjoining the opposite lateral margins of the respective webs. These glue lines may attach one of these webs directly to the other, or indirectly to one another via respective portions of intervening webs or web portions provided with further longitudinal glue lines.
The composite form stock resulting from such a manufacturing operation could be supplied to the form stock manufacturer's customers in many physical forms. A popular one which is perhaps most often requested is one in which the stock is repeatedly folded back on itself along the horizontal perforation lines adjoining which, later on, separate mailers will be created by perforation line severance. Although such a zig-zag folding could be accomplished using every such perforation line as a fold line, in practice, the folding is practiced only on every second or every third or every fourth such fold line, with the resulting accordion-folded composite being accumulated in a shipping carton, neatly occupying the full width and depth of the carton. When the carton is full, the composite web is severed and filling of a new box is begun, as the full box is closed, sealed and stored or shipped to a customer.
At the customer's facility (or at the facility of a service organization acting on behalf of the customer), the box is opened and the lead end of the composite web is fed into a machine, e.g. a computer-driven variable printer, which successively customizes each potential mailer of the composite web, e.g. by applying a customer's name, account number, address, and information about goods or services provided, amounts due, amounts paid, due dates, membership information and/or the like.
This information, to the extent it is applied to layers already located internally of what will become the outgoing envelopes, typically is printed using a combination of an impact printer, and either carbon coatings on some or all of some layers, interleaves of carbon paper between some or all of some layers, or carbonless copy-making coatings of either the two facing layer type or of the self-contained type on some or all of some layers.
A particularly well-known product of the type just described is the Speedimailer.RTM. business form stock available in the United States from Moore Business Forms, Inc.
In such product, the glue which is conventionally used for providing each set of two cross-web glue lines that will define the long sides of the internal space of each outgoing envelope is what is conventionally termed a "cold" glue, meaning that when it is applied, it is, or soon becomes, active without needing to be heated.
For many customers, such preassembled, pre-adhered form stock is a godsend, and "the best thing since sliced bread", but there are others who see drawbacks which they subject to criticism. The present invention was developed as a response to such criticism, in the hopes of more fully satisfying a further segment of the potential market for the form stock.
In the prior art Speedimailer.RTM. construction, a part of the normal construction method involved cold-gluing the face of the last sheet in the assembly to the back of the outgoing address sheet, as well as stream gluing left and right sides. Between these two sheets were the required number of die cut inserts; i.e., inserts which were cutback from the marginal edges at the top and bottom of the form. This construction method produced a substantial amount of "tenting" because the cold glue would setup after the forms were packaged. This tenting problem has heretofore been alleviated by various measures, such as die-cutting the inserts to reduce the bulk of the form at the fold perforations.